


god's righteous man (pretending you could live without a war)

by buckybun



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Anxious Steve Rogers, Artist Steve Rogers, Body Dysphoria, Catholic Guilt, Depression, Dissociation, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Good Boyfriend Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Insecure Steve Rogers, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Self-Sacrificing Steve Rogers, Social Anxiety, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Steve Rogers-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Touch-Starved, a brief holocaust mention!, steve rogers and his massive guilt complex, they're both trying their best, yes that's it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2019-12-26 17:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18287123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybun/pseuds/buckybun
Summary: Steve Rogers crashed the plane into the unforgiving Arctic ice.Seventy years later, Captain America was pulled back out.orsometimes he thinks that maybe when Captain America came out of the ice, he’d left Steve Rogers behind to drown.





	1. i'm vulnerable (i am not a robot)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HartwinMakethMan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HartwinMakethMan/gifts).



> tw are in the tags, please stay safe! if you ever need to talk, i'm here for you.
> 
> a lot of this is written from personal experience, some from research, i hope it turns out okay!

_"Captain America. Pretending you could live without a war."_

 

Steve Rogers fears neither war nor death.

A sickly child born in the slums of Brooklyn into the twilight of 'the war to end all wars' (though it never really did, did it? There were always more people who needed saving, more wars. It never ends.), there was hardly anything left to fear by the time he made it past ten years old.

He saw the worst in the world first. The pale dirty faces with shifty eyes that wandered the back alleys, the businessmen with hair slicked back with the cheapest pomade sold in the old corner store as if their children didn't go hungry to feed their illusion of success. He saw the same desperate faces again in the dark heart of Europe (camp after camp of the same shadows and horror, and the smell of ash never seemed to leave their clothes, no matter how many icy rivers they washed them in), the ghosts of what used to be people drifting back through the gates of hell. Some of them never made it out.

After that, not much could scare him anymore.

 

Before the serum, Steve feared failure. Every day, he woke up and failed. Over and over and over, his body failed him and each time he would stand back up, fire burning in his eyes. Skinny Steve Rogers at it again with something to prove, Bucky would always say, gently cuffing him over the head as he dragged him away. 

Maybe he did have something to prove, but he could never pin it down. It was easier to explain the righteous flame of anger in his heart than the mess up in his brain. Sometimes, Bucky would have this look in his eyes as he stared back at Steve across the pitted scrap wood they called a dining table, just this side of yelling before the neighbors began to pound the thin plaster walls, like he knew Steve was lying. But he never asked, so Steve never said anything either. 

That look was back in his eyes, shadowed beneath the visor of his peaked cap in the lights of the 1943 Stark Expo.

 _"Don't do anything stupid until I get back."_   _Steve swallowed the bitter taste at the back of his tongue, felt the hot prick of tears behind his eyes. He silently willed his voice to stay steady, narrow shoulders squared against the challenge. "How could I?" He finally forced out, just as Bucky began to turn away, an odd slump in his uniformed shoulders. "You're taking all the stupid with you."_

If "you've got nothing to prove" echoed in his ears as he stood before Erskine, chin lifted, he didn't show it. He had nothing to prove. (He did.)

 

Project Rebirth was a success, a national sensation. Steve couldn't stop feeling a dead man's blood under his fingernails.

He smiled for the cameras, shook the hands of politicians, pranced on stage between painted red lips and flying blonde curls. The flashing of the cameras speared through his hypersensitive eyes, stabbing into his brain. Steve vividly remembered seeing a bead of sweat roll down one man's temple, barely striking the edge of his sleeve. For whatever reason, he never wore that shirt again. 

There was an empty feeling in his chest, that tore with every flash of the lightbulbs, every overfriendly hand he clasped, every time the curtains opened. Steve felt like a doll, ripping at the seams. 

(The only mirror in their old apartment was a tiny square resting on the shelf by the front door, chipped and dirty at the edges. Steve was around mirrors all the time now, but it seemed to make no difference. The man he saw couldn't possibly be him. He tried to look away whenever he passed one.)

 

Bucky, lying on his back, chapped lips murmuring the same sequence of numbers over and over. There was a bruise on his temple, and a wilderness in his gaze that hadn't been there before. Steve reached forward with his (too-large) hands, feeling smaller and more helpless than he ever had. (There were shadows in Bucky's eyes now, fear in the way his eyes darted across the room, the way his back was always to a wall. Steve couldn't help but feel like part of Bucky had been lost in that dank room with the metal table.)

Bucky, dazed eyes roving over his new body, wonder and confusion in his voice. Steve reached forward to steady him as his legs buckled briefly, and noticed for the first time that he was taller than Bucky. (There were ribs under his palm, like they had somehow switched places when he had gone into that chamber. That night, Steve ran his hands down his side and reminded himself that he could still feel his ribs under the smooth muscle.)

Bucky, dangling from the side of a train, a deadly drop beneath his feet. He screamed as the metal gave way, breath barely fogging before he vanished into the unforgiving white. Steve reached forward, hands grasping at the frigid air. (He remembered Coney Island, the sensation of falling. His legs felt numb and heavy as he staggered back into the cabin, a wail building in his throat. He was still falling as he stumbled off the train, catching sight of the rest of the Commandos. Steve was silent for three days before he spoke again.)

 

Then it was Steve's turn to fall, to the sound of radio static and Peggy's pleas. He didn't recognize his voice as he made empty promises, eyes fixed on the expanse of ice beneath him. How fitting and how ironic that he and Bucky would go the same way. Besides, the war was almost over. They would no longer need him, except as a souvenir, he told himself. 


	2. hold on to me ('cause i'm a little unsteady)

Steve never felt like he belonged inside his body. Back when he was 5'2" of fire and rage, he was too big. He remembered nights spent in alleys, crying until his lungs screamed for air because his body felt too small to contain him. He remembered the frantic hammering of his pulse in his throat, the throbbing of his newest black eye, the stinging of his bony knuckles. He remembered wishing to be big so hard it  _hurt._ If he was big, then maybe tiny Walter Eakley's painstakingly made mother's day present wouldn't be in pieces in the gutter, kicked to the side before Steve could reach them. If he was big, then he'd be allowed to work in the factory, or at the docks like Bucky, instead of watching his mother slave away at the hospital to pay for his medicine and keep the leaking roof over their heads. (If he was big, then maybe he'd actually be able to make a difference.)

 

He did everything he could.

As they neared the ripe old age of fifteen and fourteen respectively, Bucky offered to share some of the tricks that he used to build muscle, even sneaking Steve down to the docks as soon as he got off his shift at Mr. Cotter's grocery store.

Steve had an asthma attack before he allowed Bucky to drag him home. He wasn't surprised when he wasn't invited the next day.

 

A month and three days after Steve turned eighteen, his mother got sick. He was already working 3 jobs to pay off the rising rent, still getting fired more frequently than he was getting a paycheck ( _"I swear Buck, it really wasn't my fault this time!"_ ), and praying everyday that his health would hold up under the pressure. Sarah was home maybe half an hour before he left for working the mornings, and he occasionally heard the squeaky front door closing in the early hours when she came home.

No matter how she tried, she couldn't hide her deteriorating health from Steve. Her eyes grew sunken and bright, mouth drawn, skin sallow. The bags of exhaustion under her eyes had been there ever since Steve could remember, but he couldn't ever remember them being that bad. Once, Steve hugged her when she came home and realized with a sickening jolt that his fingers slotted between her ribs.

But he couldn't say anything, do anything to make her take food off his plate, take a shift off, take a break. (All his mother ever did was give and give and give. Nothing Steve will ever do could possibly atone for what he had taken, he decides.) After all, the streets were a dangerous place, and Steve didn't look much better either. But in the end, she was the one who died. 

He snuck as much of his dinner as he dared onto her plate, his earnings into the tattered pocket of her nurse uniform, took the night shifts she forbade him from while she was asleep, too exhausted to notice the door opening. It wasn't enough. Steve had a front row seat to his mother's slow death, watched as she came home everyday, stooped with exhaustion, listened to her hacking coughs through the thin plaster wall before she opened the door as if it would keep him from realizing how sick she was. He begged the neighbors, the pharmacy, the hospital she worked at. (But everybody was tired and hungry back then, and he was only spared a pitying glance as he was thrown out each time.)

 

After she died, Steve didn't leave the house for two days. His job didn't matter, nothing mattered, because his mom was  _dead_. He slept and slept and slept. In hazy pockets of wakefulness, he stared blankly at the spiderweb cracks in the peeling paint on the ceiling above his bed, and then went back to sleep. The third day, his landlord pounded on the door, 1-day eviction notice in hand and an impatient expression on her hardened face. Steve, for once in his life, said nothing, taking the paper and retreating back into the depths of his former home.

The fourth day was the funeral. Steve's belongings rested beside him in the damp grass of the cemetery, Bucky's large hand wrapped around his shoulders. He couldn't help but feel like the plot of land should have been for him. 

Maybe if he hadn't gotten sick so often, she wouldn't have worked so hard trying to buy medicine and call for a doctor. Maybe if he hadn't picked so many fights, she wouldn't have had to make up for the missed income. Maybe if he wasn't an extra mouth to feed, she wouldn't have gotten so weak. (Maybe if he was dead, she wouldn't have been.)

 

Steve stopped eating for the three days that he lived inside the Barnes' home, afraid of bringing the same curse upon them. Ms. Barnes was, after all, also a single mother, with 2 children instead of one, and he caught glimpses of his mother in the tired lines of her face too. (And if that made his chest hurt, he chalked it up to his childhood heart murmur.) As he watched Bucky's face light up at something she said from across the room, loud laugh echoing off the walls, Steve decided that nobody would ever suffer on his account again. He blinked away the dark spots in the corners of his vision as he stood.

He'd pull his own weight or die trying.

(On the fourth day, Bucky found his unconscious body sprawled across the floor of their shared bedroom, the handle of his hastily packed suitcase still clutched in his loose grip. He'd been furious, yelling at Steve for a quarter hour after he woke up before forcing him to eat the bread he'd brought home that day from the corner store. Numbly, Steve ate it, mechanically breaking off pieces and chewing. And if he threw it all up later when he heard Becca complaining the she was still hungry, Bucky never had to find out.)


	3. so much space between us (maybe we're already defeated)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warning: graphic description of war imagery/death

_"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."_

_-Winston Churchill_

 

 

In the summer of '37, Bucky and Steve moved out of the already overcrowded Barnes residence to a tenement closer to the docks, so that Bucky would be closer to his work. It was small and dirty, like every other building this side of the district border, and the rusty lock fell clean off the door when they opened it on the first day. Steve didn't care, but Bucky insisted on buying a new lock that very night, even if they had nothing to steal. 

"You can't be too careful in these parts, Steve. Some of these people, they don't want your money, they want your life." 

(Later, Steve met a lot of these people. He looked them in the eyes, smelled the death that their breath carried. He saw the headlines and the deathcamps, the headquarters, the burned out husks of what used to be homes. He saw film clips of women begging on their knees, child in their arms. Men lying in shallow trenches, still moaning and stirring as their friends and family were gunned down around them. The impassive generals at their lavish parties, their wives and their glittering necklaces, bought with the lives of ten children murdered in a dark alley to prove a point to their parents. As he gunned down opposing soldiers, shield flashing and boots making a sickening crunch as it met a man's knee, he wondered if he had inadvertently become one of these people in his fight against them.)

"I know, Buck. But do we really hafta do this the first night?"

 

With only two mouths to feed, Bucky and Steve working together could put more food on the table. Bucky picked up shifts at the cannery when he wasn't at the docks, and Steve worked on art commissions when business at the store was going slow. Even with the bits and pieces that Bucky sent home to his parents, they were able to live more comfortably, work less hours. 

Living together with less people around them also meant that Bucky would be eating with him. Steve felt a shot of anxiety as he picked up the first whole loaf of bread he had entirely to himself.  _You know, if you'd been able to pay for this, your mother probably wouldn't be dead right now._ He put it down, mumbling an excuse about feeling sick. Bucky looked up from his own dinner, concern coloring his eyes. Steve felt a warm hand on his forehead, the thumb smoothing unconsciously over his eyebrow. 

"You can have mine." 

Bucky was still a growing boy, shooting up past 5'11". They might have enough to not be actively starving to death, but he was not going to refuse an extra helping of bread. Nodding, he pushed Steve lightly towards the bed.

Steve went to bed satisfied, knowing that Bucky would not be starving on his account tonight. It was worth the pangs of hunger he fell asleep to, if Bucky would be full.

 

Steve skipped meals as often as he dared without raising suspicions.

Somewhere inside of him, he knew that this was not normal behaviour. He should be eating  _more_ if he wanted to grow, work in physical labor like Bucky. But he still got sick every winter, and it was only right that the food should not be wasted on him if he was going to die soon anyway. No matter how many odd jobs he picked up, his income was still lower than Bucky's, so more food should naturally be going towards the breadwinner of the family. He was smaller, didn't need as much energy.

(He needed to wash his mother's blood off his hands.)

With every chunk of unseasoned potato he snuck onto Bucky's plate, every crust of bread back into the breadbox, he felt better. Less guilty. Bucky wouldn't starve if he did. 

It wasn't much, but it was enough.

 

He ignored the asthma attack he had once when he accidentally ate the bread he was saving for Bucky, the first time he cried in the bathroom because he'd lost a job to a particularly bad bout of illness, even though Bucky had gotten a raise earlier that week. He ignored the near-constant clenching in his stomach, the nausea he felt whenever he ate, the dizziness when he stood up too fast, the-

Bucky complained that his hands and feet were always cold. (They shared a bed. In the winter, it was a blessing. In the summer, it was a curse.) One time, he reached around Steve to pull him out of the street just in time for a car to rush past, spraying their pants with mud. Steve expected him to chase after the car, shaking his fist and shouting (after all, they were on their way to the dance hall, and their laundry allowance for the week had already been used up), but he remained silent, looking down at Steve with an odd look in his eyes. 

That night, Steve ate more than he had in months, Bucky watching him with hawk eyes to reassure himself that Steve ate everything on his plate. He could feel eyes on his hands as he ate, head down so that Bucky wouldn't see the tears stinging in his eyes. He finished the plate and went to bed, claiming a headache. He felt Bucky's gaze on his back as he retreated into the safe darkness of the covers.

After that, Bucky kept a watchful eye on what he ate. 

(Steve couldn't make himself focus on anything but the liquid guilt that ran down his throat. Not the color in his face, the steadiness of his pencil lines, not the gradual warming of his hands and feet. Liquid guilt.)

 

Winter of '41 came and went. The talk of the war spread like wildfire, men and boys lined up at the admissions offices, the face of Uncle Sam and his accusing finger pointing out of every fluttering propaganda poster. Steve was turned down. Bucky cuffed his ear. Life went on.

 

Bucky was drafted in '42. (Not that he'd  _told_ Steve, mind you. He found out about the draft seventy years later, and locked himself in his room until Natasha had broken in.) On that day, Steve was busy dividing that week's flour ration when Bucky had burst through the door, whooping and hollering that he'd made it into the army. (It was an act. Bucky was able-bodied, face bright with the fiery bloom of youth; the exact kind of man they'd want on the front lines. There was no reason they wouldn't have taken him immediately if he had applied. Steve wondered if Bucky had paused outside the door before running in, wondered how long it took to plaster that smile across his face as if he didn't know that he was being sent to his death.)

Steve had offered him a tight-lipped smile, a quiet congratulations. His throat felt tight and he abandoned the flour, snatching up the bag of trash by the door, leaving Bucky in the middle of the room, a fading smile on his lips. He told himself that the cloying taste in his mouth was just the rancid smell of the garbage, the hammering of his heart was just jealousy that Bucky had been accepted while he'd been turned down. 

That night, they had the biggest fight they had ever had. It started with Bucky accusing him of jealousy, and  _what's with that attitude, Steve, you should be excited that one of us is getting in!_ and Steve snapping back that he  _was_ excited, so maybe Bucky should just  _get off my back, James!_ and ended with doors slamming. Bucky was the one to leave this time, a disproportionately bitter look on his face as he stalked out.

(And maybe Steve should have known then that something wasn't right. But what could he have possibly done? At what point had it been too late to save Bucky?)

Steve cried through the night, and when Bucky stumbled in the next night reeking of alcohol with sober eyes, neither of them said a thing.


	4. weeks on end, i'm on the road (i start to lose my sense of home)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the whole chapter is now up! sorry for the delay;; i'm approaching ap testing season and everything is so stressful, but updates should be more frequent after the second week of may!! :)

_"These are the times that try men's souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country."_

_-Thomas Paine_

 

 

Bucky shipped out, and Steve joined the army. 

Project Rebirth felt like a godsend, a gift sent from heaven. Steve steeled himself before the great metal contraption ( _notadeathtrapnotadeathtrapnotad-_ ) and shrugged off the foreign hands on his shoulders. He would face this alone.

As he was strapped down, he closed his eyes. His mom would want this. She had always wanted him healthy and happy (and safe, but Steve supposed that he wasn't going to live far past the age of twenty-five anyway. It was better this way.). 

(It seemed like the only times in Steve Rogers' life where the end justified the means were when the only potential casualty was him.)

 

It hurt. White spots burst to life behind his eyelids, squeezed shut. Blinding white light seared into the back of his brain, stabbing through his head. He felt his back arch, the restraints tearing at his skin.

It was so hot, like he was burning alive from inside out. Surely his flesh was rending from his bones—

A scream from between his gritted teeth—

Shouting—

The light started fading, and he could hear Peggy's frantic voice outside, somehow so close and so far at the same time. The brief respite gave him time to remember his objective. (If he’s going to die, he better die doing something useful.)

He panted inside the cramped ~~coffin~~ machine.

"No! Don't!" 

_I can do this._

 

Steve remembered the winter of '29. It was bitterly cold, and Steve had caught his second bout of pneumonia that year delivering newspapers, lungs rattling with every wet breath. His mom was more exhausted than he had ever seen her before, worry set in the premature lines of her face. He slipped in and out of consciousness as the wet cloths on his burning forehead were changed intermittently. (Later, Sarah had told him that he had slept for 3 days once, and they had feared that he would never wake up.)

Occasionally, Bucky was by his bed, sitting in the stool that normally sat by the door. He always had a new book in his hands, unclear words reaching through the fog of his fevered brain. (But Bucky despised reading. He was a bright student in arithmetic and the sciences, but could never seem to sit through a whole English or history class.) Other days(? Steve could never be sure how much time passed when he was sick.), his voice could be heard through the wall, an indistinct murmur he would follow to the ends of the world.

He sweated through his sheets quickly, pain in his chest flaring with every jarring cough. His heart fluttered inside his ribcage like a frightened bird, throbbing in his temples and at the base of his throat. (By the time he was twenty, his teeth were already evened from the grinding through his fevers.) 

He drifted, Bucky's presence never leaving his side, like an anchor to the mortal world.

 

Steve sometimes came across the morbid thought that the reason he was so prepared to die was because of how many times he'd had his Last Rites read. His spirit had been ready for the final judgement for as long as he'd been alive; God was practically opening the doors to him.

 

_Buy bonds and support your country! Every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy's gun._

Face greeted him wherever he went now, surrounded by a crowd of girls in garishly colored outfits. Suddenly, he was a foot farther away from the ground, and heads turned when he walked by. He fought the urge to shrink from the eyes that followed wherever he went. ( _He can't escape._ ) 

Steve was the center of attention, the main attraction at all the functions he was driven to. He watched another set of eyes raking appreciatively down his front, and buttoned up his suit jacket. The small stem of the champagne glass cracked in his grip, and he subtly dropped it into the overflowing alley bin as he passed. 

He tried not to mind the people. They could be doing far worse to him than just looking and suggestive comments, sweaty handshakes and slicked hair, he reasoned.

There was no logical explanation for the tightness in his chest, the stinging pricks of heat inside his skull as if he'd swallowed a hive of bees. His mouth felt dry, and he forced another smile, imagining his lips splitting. This senator has a silver tooth. Steve felt like he was underwater, plastering a smile on his face as he tried to make out what the man was saying. 

Each night blended into the next. Red lipstick and scribbled lines long since memorized stuck on the back of a prop shield. Another camera flashed somewhere, another child thrust into his hands, more handshakes. More smiling, more dancing, more drinking.

(Everyone always got drunk towards the end of the night. He remembered carrying two giggling showgirls home under his arms, perfectly steady as he sent them off to bed, even though he himself had drunk more than both combined. He remembered looking down and noticing his hand spanning one of their shoulders, remembered moving his fingers to make sure they were really his.)

 

Bucky's whole unit was captured, and Steve resurfaced from the whirlpool of lights and shows, blue eyes blinking awake with new purpose. Finally, he could be of use. 

 

Bucky wasn't the same after that. His eyes became dark and shifty, darting across the room and back, across the room and back and across again, like he was never completely there with Steve. (Maybe he wasn’t.) There was a gun strapped across his chest that never came off. Steve could hear Bucky counting the bullets he had under his breath at night sometimes. Those were the nights that neither of them slept.

But Bucky was back. Steve was the taller one, suddenly, and he felt dizzy thinking about the fact that he could see the top of Bucky's head. He tried to ignore how big his arms looked as he guided Bucky back to bed after a night of drinking. (Bucky went for hard alcohols nowadays, tossing them back like water shots they used to do at the old tenement, playing at being adults.) His eyes were sober, hands steady even as his uneven gait nearly sent him face-first into the dirt as he stumbled next to Steve. Neither of them mentioned it, playing along numbly like marionettes on a looped control. 

But Bucky couldn't fool Steve. Perhaps he wasn't trying to. 

 

Bit by bit, the Bucky Steve knew came back.

Steve tried to convince himself that everything was the same; the smile that curved the corner of his lip, the way his voice would drop when he seduced the local girls when the Howlies passed through towns. But his eyes never lost the darkness behind them, like someone had closed the curtains, dropped a screen to protect him from the rest of the world. He didn't like being touched without warning. (One time, he'd broken a French village girl's arm when she came up behind him. Steve had had to reset the bone, then coax Bucky back to camp. After that, they were all extra careful.) Sometimes, he would have awful headaches that rendered him near immobile, groaning quietly and unsteady on his feet. Steve would carry him on those days. It was the least he could do, after all the times he'd been dragged home after yet another alley fight. 

_He should have sent Bucky home while he could. Instead, they walked deeper into war-torn Europe._

They were still inseparable. Still SteveandBucky, til the end of the line. Bucky's irate voice would yell over the comms, Steve grinning under his helmet as he charged forward, knowing his back was covered. At night, the other boys ribbed them, Mama Barnes and her disobedient son. Card games replaced alcohol, and the radio was always in Bucky's hands, fingers fiddling endlessly to get a scrap of news from the front.

_He should have sent Bucky home while he could._

Steve brought up honorable discharge once. He'd gotten an incredulous look in response,  _are you out of your mind?_ Of course Bucky wasn't leaving him here to get his fool head blown off first chance he got.

(Steve kept the discharge request in his breast pocket, just in case.)

_He should have sent Bucky home-_

A night at base camp gave them a new mission: capture Arnim Zola. Bucky seemed to hold a grim satisfaction at that, getting antsy as they were dispatched towards the Alps.

_He should have-_

"This isn't revenge, is it?" "Now, why would I do that?"

_He-_

 

_"Bucky!"_


	5. you've got it all (you lost your mind in the sound)

Less than a week later, Steve was driving a plane into the depths of the sea just south of the arctic circle.

 

Steve could almost see Peggy’s expression in the break of her voice, the press of her painted red lips in the quiet, staticky breathing that got through the radio. He imagined the furrow in her brow as she tried to not cry.

(He knew because he’d seen that same expression on himself, distorted in the reflection of a whiskey bottle in a bombed-out bar, far away from the white hellscape that stretched before the rattling windows of the plane.)

 

Peggy deserved better than him, a broken man in love with another. Steve could see the sick humor; Peggy watched him while he watched Bucky, and none of them said a thing. She was everything his ma would have ever wanted for her son, someone who had loved him when he was small and loved him just the same after the eyes of history turned onto him.

(They’d have gotten along thick as thieves, Peg and his ma. The same steely strength behind their eyes and the determination in the set of their lips. They had both sacrificed far too much for him.)

 

He could almost imagine that he could fall in love with Peggy.

(Almost. The figures dancing to the living room radio were always blurry in his mind’s eye, brilliant colors faded into the shabbiness of the old Brooklyn tenement and suddenly it was Bucky’s blue-grey eyes staring at him and Bucky’s red lips before him.

Steve ignored the voice in the back of his head reminding him that he was no longer eye-level with Bucky’s chin.)

 

Bucky’s absence was all-encompassing, staining every aspect of his waking hours like ink in the cuticles of his fingernails. (No matter how hard he scrubbed, it never came out.)

Steve could almost see the black handprints he left everywhere he went, on everything he touched.

(Peggy’s lips are still red.)

 

Steve had been hauled back into the gutted train car roughly, numb fingers forgetting how to let go. There was a gruff voice in his ear (not his good ear— even after the serum, after Steve had stopped angling his head to hear what he was saying, Bucky had always spoken into his good ear unconsciously) and hands on his shoulders.

His skin was tingling, and his body was cold for the first time since he had stepped out of Howard’s machine.

_What good was this miracle body if it couldn’t save the one thing that mattered most?_

 

In the last week he spent in the 20th century, they didn’t talk about Bucky. The other men crept around Steve as if he was a ticking time bomb, like they were in an unmapped minefield. Bucky’s pack somehow turned up whenever they settled down for the night, and his rations remained undivided.

(Later interviews of the surviving Howling Commandos about the death of Sergeant Barnes could be played side by side, the same blanked, grim expression. Usually, the interview was over after that.

There is a letter lost in the WWII-era US Army records, scribbled onto torn butcher paper, requesting that the Captain be taken out of the field. The answering rejection was too late to matter anyway.)

Steve couldn’t remember the last time he smiled. His face still felt frozen from the biting winter air _highinthealpsonablacktrain_ and he felt cracks spread when he opened his mouth to talk.

 

He wondered if it hurt.

Was it quick and brutal, Bucky’s neck instantly snapped by the impact at the bottom of the ravine?

Did he feel pain when he fell, was he scared?

Or did he hit the ground, body broken but eyes open, staring into the grey sky above him, snowflakes catching on his eyelashes until his vision was white? What if he hadn’t died in the initial impact, and slowly bled out, dying of hypothermia?

(Bucky had always saved Steve, an avenging angel reaching out of the darkness, a steady hand curled around the back of his neck in the night. Steve had saved him but once, but he knew the gleam of faith in Bucky’s gaze, felt it warm on his back whenever he looked away. Had he held out faith, waited for Steve to come save him?)

 

It felt like cruel justice when the icy water rushed through the windows of the cockpit, shattered in the jarring impact. Steve felt his ribs bend under the safety belt, the pilot’s chair break and slam into the dashboard. Bubbles escaped as he tore himself out, gasping at the pocket of air pooling near the ceiling.

His serum gifted him with enhanced lung capacity and more effective oxygen usage. In the quickly darkening cabin, Steve knew that he had time to reach the surface if he wanted to.

Something nudged his ankle, and Peggy’s mysterious smile stared up at him in the quickly dimming light.

Steve made his choice.

 

He took a deep breath, watched the remaining air trickle through a bent window-frame, dim light catching in the bubbles.

 

And he let it out, lying down on the floor of the cockpit, almost floating.

 

Steve closed his eyes.


	6. we shout in our heads (are you still in there?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! warning and reminder that there is a graphic depiction of s/h and blood in this chapter, so if you're not in a safe mindset to read about it, please stay safe!
> 
> there's a lil reference in here to another sad!steve fic that i can't find in my bookmarks to link D: but it's really good and i'm hoping to find it again! please let me know if you know this fic so i can link it here!

_"Only the dead have seen the end of war."_

_\- Plato_

 

Awareness comes gradually. He’s lying in a soft bed, warm light seeping through his eyelids. His fingertips twitch against soft sheets.

_Something's wrong._

A fan whirs to his right, a tinny voice filtering into the room.

_He's been here before._

There’s a freezing plunge in his gut as he sits up abruptly, every muscle tensed to run, without knowing where or why. Steve has no recollection of how or why he had gotten here, which is unusual for his serum-enhanced memory. 

Then the memory crashes into his foggy brain, of the rattling bay windows and the endless expanse of ice and Peggy's breaking voice and then—

The door swings open and his head snaps around, blue eyes already searching. Every fiber in his body is screaming _wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong_ , the voice of the unfamiliar woman drowned out.

"Where am I?"

The odds of him surviving the crash... could HYDRA be a part of the false reality he sees around him? Or is he dead?

 

The SHIELD bunkers are cold.

Steve stares up at the ceiling, resisting the urge to put on another shirt. A hot flush of embarrassment creeps across his cheeks as he fingers the two layers of blankets that cover him up to his neck. The thermostat (he could hear Bucky's voice whooping even in his bad ear as the tiny gas stove in their old apartment coughed and sputtered to life) is set at the standard 75 degrees.

Sighing into the darkness, he swings his bare feet to the floor, refusing to recoil as the concrete registers cold to his brain. Recalling a gym somewhere on his painfully formal tour of the building facilities by an impassive agent, he opens the door.

(A ghost wanders the corridors, as grey as the walls around him.)

Some part of him is still in shock, questioning if his feet are really hitting the floor, if his hand had been the one to open the door. He feels vaguely lightheaded, in a way that seemed to detach his consciousness from his body and turn his hypersensitive skin into a screen of static.

Maybe he’s dreaming. Where would he wake up? In the silent camp in the icy swiss mountains, grief hanging like an impenetrable cloud, in Bucky's arms on the trek through southern France, in his hard bunk at Camp Leigh, in their shared bed in Brooklyn, the sunrise filtering weakly through grimy, chipped windows and cascading over the rumpled sheets as Bucky got dressed? Not the future. 

What a god-awful dream. Steve hopes it’ll be over soon.

 

He punches the bag until he bleeds through the wraps. The jarring impact seems to shake his dazed brain halfway to reality. His toes brush the floor. 

His knuckles are stained bright red, a shocking contrast to the washed-out quality of his clammy skin.

_Why am I still cold?_

Sweat drips from his bangs and between his shoulderblades. Steve blinks. His eyelashes come away wet, clumped together.

Through blurry vision, he flexes his hands, watching as blood beads along the uneven splits and wells in the gouges in his skin. Pain lances up the bones of his hand into his arm.

It occurs to him that he should probably clean this up. 

The door to the gym bathroom suddenly seems far away, a chasm opening up around him. A fog of exhaustion clouds his mind, cement filling the hollow space where his feet should be. Steve feels glued to the floor.

A set of purposeful footsteps sound behind him and Steve wrenches his feet up, feeling roots tearing, broken splinters in the smooth concrete floor. 

"Trouble sleeping?" Director Fury.

"Slept for seventy years, sir— I think I've had my fill." Steve watches Fury's eye linger on his mangled hands. The hair at the nape of his neck prickles at the scrutiny and he drags his body into parade rest, hands locked behind his back. Fury's gaze returns to his face, expression unreadable.

His skin is buzzing, like the cells just under the surface are vibrating. The director's lips are moving, but somehow Steve can't hear a word. Carefully keeping his face blank, he digs his fingernails into the knuckles of his left hand, feeling the tacky blood stain his fingertips. A bolt of sharp pain shoots up his arm and his head clears slightly. 

He realizes Fury is waiting for an answer and mutely nods, vaguely hoping that he looks more confident than he feels.

Time drags on, the dossier slapping down in slow motion. Fury leaves. 

Steve stands in the empty gym, surrounded by the broken corpses of punching bags. His knuckles are healed by the time he moves again, dried blood flaking off as he picks up the folder.

 

After a few weeks at SHIELD, he starts falling into a routine.

Wake up at 5:00, back from a 20 mile run at 6:00. Shower by 6:15, meet with his social reintegration counselor from 6:30 to 10:00. Help out with the training of new agents until 12:00. Lunch. Personal training, then with the STRIKE team. They break at 4:30.

Steve goes to the bare chapel buried deep in the facility, usually until they send someone after him to remind him of dinner break. He's never quite certain how time passes in that tiny room, artificial light behind the stained glass windows casting across the rows of dark wooden benches. There’s a security camera in the back right corner. Steve can see the red light of the sensors pulsing, enhanced ears picking up the dull humming of electricity in the walls. He wonders if he prayed.

(Sarah Rogers never missed a day of prayer. He could remember watching her thin lips move through wavering vision, his cold hands clasped in hers.)

_Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._

> Lights out at 10:30. He stares at the ceiling for an hour and a half and begs death to take him until 12:00. At some point in the night, he heaves himself out of bed (out of the tear-soaked pillows and smothering blankets that never seem to be warm enough) and drifts through the empty halls with their endless rows of long flourescent lights and cold gunmetal walls. Beat himself bloody on the punching bags. Try to feel guilty enough for the mess he leaves to clean it up. Back to bed by 3: ****00, if he focuses on keeping track of time.

By morning, his skin is smooth once more, like sand on a beach at low tide.

_Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._

_Amen._


	7. i swallow my words down to the bone (nothing's that simple)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my poor touch-starved bby :')

Steve learns more about space than he had ever asked for, sees the gaping black abyss that splits the sky over New York City like some twisted opening to Hell itself, and thinks about home, five miles and seventy years away.

He meets a man whose honest smile never seems to fully touch his guarded eyes and a chameleon woman who uses her face like a weapon and a scientist who stores his brilliance away like a curse. He meets a genius who wears his surname like a burden and his ego like a shield; another man(?) who seems just as out of place in this world as Steve does.

He moves out of the greywallsgreyroomsgreyfloors of the SHIELD bunkers and into the newly christened Avengers Tower gratefully, but he may as well have jumped forward another seventy years.

 

Steve swears to himself that he really didn't mean to.

When one grows up in the Great Depression, they eat what they can. Whatever was given to them. In the army, you eat your rations like a good soldier and move on. Nothing more to it.

In the Tower, with its walk-in freezers and a pantry that could have fed his entire apartment building for a month, Steve feels off-balance, a bull in a china shop. (He wants to go _home_.)

The Avengers are barely a team most of the time, Thor off-world and Natasha and Clint disappearing every so often, Tony and Bruce secluded in the labs downstairs until they needed food. Steve sees Pepper the most as she checks in with him to make sure he didn't need anything. (He squashes down the thought that she might've been good friends with Peggy.) There is a voice in the walls of the building with eyes that track its residents like a benevolent angel, swooping in before Steve breaks another microwave oven.

Other than that, he is alone.

There are no rations or mealtimes (Tony and Bruce's hours could hardly be called 'regular') and Pepper was away on SI business often. Steve finds himself wandering in and out of the kitchen without even thinking about it, fingers trailing over brightly colored boxes and crinkly plastic bags but rarely picking anything up.

There is an untouched storage box of military unperishables stashed in the back of his closet. (For what, Steve doesn’t know.)

 

Outside of the gym and the hours set aside to learn about the future (Steve knows he should really stop calling the 21st century "the future." Some part of him is still in denial, stubbornly refusing to accept this time as the present, as if he could wind the clock back seventy years through sheer willpower), Steve spends a lot of time sleeping.

It occurs to him that the serum should be keeping him from fatigue in periods of low activity, but he can't find it within himself to care. He’s just tired. The days march on. Gym, sleep, gym, sleep.

Once, he notices his hands shaking as he ties off the knuckle-wraps, his muscles suddenly struggling to pull tight enough. With a growl of frustration, he tosses them into his locker, going at the bag with bare fists, savoring the sharp sting. He'll heal.

 

Steve takes a lot of showers; whenever cold numbness begins to seep into his bones and no amount of punching seemed to warm him up, the hot water always helps. He often loses track of time, only feeling the pang of guilt at wasting water after he comes back to himself. The alertness that comes with the mottled burns across his pale skin is worth seeing the borrowed body in the foggy mirror, like a hulking giant trapped on the other side of the glass.

 

Steve wakes up on the floor of his spacious shower to worried calls from JARVIS, the temperature of the water no longer searing his skin. His head is buzzing, his pulse throbbing uncomfortably in his throat as he gets to his feet unsteadily.

(He’s suddenly back in his old body, his heart threatening to give out at any second. There’s comfort in the familiarity— Bucky’s steadying arms around his shoulders, hands on his face, worried voice in his right ear.)

“—Captain Rogers, I would strongly advise—“

He blinks away the dark spots in his vision. Right. He’s living in the future now, and Bucky is _dead_. 

“It’s alright, JARVIS. Just… a slip.”

The AI falls into a disapproving silence as he gets dressed. After a long pause, he reminds Steve that he had scheduled a ‘team dinner’ that night in an attempt to get them together on one of the rare occasions that everyone was in the Tower.

Steve thinks about canceling it, his gaze sliding to his uniformly-made bed. They wouldn’t miss him, a wet blanket from the 1920s who hadn’t a clue how to interact with the citizens of the new century. But what kind of leader was he, to step out of his own events?

Steve loops his belt around his waist, absently noting that he had dropped a hole smaller.

 

Dinner starts fine, Tony and Thor trickling in behind their two resident spies, Bruce already working in the kitchen. Conversation is surprisingly pleasant (he isn’t exactly leaping up to strangle Tony to death, so Steve counts it as a win), and he zones out, Clint’s dramatic retelling of his last field assignment blurring. The spaghetti on his fork slides off the end of the silver prongs. He puts it down.

Some minutes later, he distantly hears Natasha’s voice behind him, surfacing sluggishly from the fog in his head.

“Captain? Are you aware that the back of your head is bleeding?” Her words are sharp, eyes narrowed as Steve turns instinctively, exposing the matted patch of scarlet staining his blonde hair to the rest of the team at the table. His hand probes the site of dull pulsing that he’d been ignoring since the start of dinner and his fingertips come away stained bright red.

_Huh. Usually such wounds would have closed by now._

Bruce is on his feet, concern coloring his eyes. “What happened?”

Before Steve can react, there are gentle hands on him, tilting his head and combing his hair away from the injury. Steve can’t breathe past the sudden lump in his throat, fighting back tears at the familiarity of the sensation.

Bruce is in front of him now, two warm fingers tapping his cheek to get his attention.

“Captain Rogers, I need you to focus on me. There is a high likelihood that you have a concussion, and I need to know how you got it. What happened?”

Words are hard to grasp, the sounds slipping away from him like water. Steve lets his eyes slide lazily past Bruce’s face. Clint and Thor had both risen out of their seats, frowns on their faces.

He can hear Tony speaking, but not to him. 

“—RVIS?”

Steve opens and closes his lips, trying to force a sound from his bone-dry mouth. Even the smooth voice of Tony’s AI seems to reverberate in his skull, and he struggles to match voices to mouths as everyone starts speaking at once.

His throat sticks as he swallows, blinking rapidly as the world dissolves into bright colors and piercing light. The last thing he knows is a shout of alarm as he slides out of his seat, a pair of arms wrapping around his chest.

 

Steve wakes up in the Tower hospital wing, alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of these symptoms that steve has are of low blood sugar, which can be caused by not eating enough! (the dizziness, confusion, fainting in hot showers, dry mouth, slow reaction times, spiking anxiety, blurry vision, agitation, fatigue, unexpected crying/mood swings) please be careful and take care of yourselves!


	8. you'll lose it in the morning (but ignore that)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alright y'all this is your last warning that i only take events from the canon universe when it suits me, so this fic is essentially an au where i throw in some events and ignore others! if there's something that you'd really like to see, do lmk!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for disordered eating habits and body image!!!

There’s an IV leading into the back of his right hand. Curiously, Steve flexes the hand, watching as the tape crinkles over his skin. (He’s not sure how or why he’s still surprised that he can feel the tube moving as he’s seeing it happen.)

Just to be sure (sure of what?), he moves his hand again, harder, clenching his jaw at the sharp sting.

There are two sets of footsteps approaching his door which he recognizes as Bruce and Tony even without the help of Tony’s voice.

“—more money than _God_ , why on _earth—_ ” The door opens.

Bruce recovers quickly. “Captain Rogers! It’s good to see you awake.”

Steve smiles thinly, drawing himself up. “It’s good to be awake, Doctor Banner.” He tracks Bruce’s movement across the room as the doctor busies himself at the monitor turned away from the bed. A frown crosses his face and he opens a drawer, scooping up two slim packets and handing them to Steve.

“Glucose gel packs; you should feel better after your blood sugar goes up a bit more. Are you—”

Tony, who has remained suspiciously silent since entering the room, finally chips in. “Oh, I’ve been through this one before. Any weakness? Dizziness? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Bruce gives a long-suffering sigh, but makes no effort to stop him. “Captain Rogers, what is the last thing you remember?”

Steve considers. “At the dinner table… yesterday.” For a moment, time spins out of control, and burning panic blossoms in his chest.

_It could easily have been another seventy years._

He doesn’t even know what time of the day it is, Steve realizes, an iron fist of panic closing around his throat.

Bruce nods carefully. There’s a look of concern on his face that makes Steve want to simultaneously lean in and crawl into a deep dark hole. “Do you know what happened to cause your blackout?”

“No.” He’s acutely aware of Tony’s disbelieving snort at his left and pointedly ignores it.

“You collapsed primarily due to hypoglycemia-- low blood sugar. JARVIS informed us that you’d shown signs of a prior blackout in the shower you’d taken right before dinner, and also that you haven’t been eating properly in the weeks that you’ve been living with us, enough so that your serum’s healing factor was significantly impaired, hence the resulting concussion.”

Mutely, Steve nods, suddenly unable to meet Bruce’s brown eyes. He can feel a red flush spreading across his face and the tips of his ears, Irish heritage betraying him.

He tenses, waiting for the blow to strike him, waiting for interrogation— why isn’t he eating? Doesn’t he know the limits of the serum?

(He’s waiting for condemnation too, because what kind of loon tries to starve themselves to death when given everything they could possibly ask for? Steve has no answers.)

Tony’s eyes are burning a hole into the side of his head, but he forces his gaze up evenly, bracing.

His team would never respect or trust him again, or worse, he’s thrown off the Avengers Initiative, stripped of his sole purpose in this new future where nothing feels real, just because he couldn’t keep it togther.

It takes all of his willpower to not shrink or cringe away as Bruce says— “It’s all the extra food, huh?”

_What?_

“I hope you’ll forgive us for being accustomed to the luxury of unrationed food,” Bruce continues, offering an apologetic smile. Steve thinks his expression has frozen on his face. “I’ve drawn up a basic mealplan adjusted to your caloric needs to help you with portioning and nutrition— I doubt things in this age looked the way they did during the Great Depression.”

 

Steve barely hears Banner’s explanation of the schedule, but he doesn’t mind, heart still thudding with relief at the misunderstanding.

Finally, Bruce closes the page on his tablet (Tony had departed a while ago, bored of the discussion) and stands, checking his vitals again before leaving with a soft “goodnight, Captain.”

He supposes that he’s expected to stay in bed, but Steve Rogers was never one for following the rules. (But looking down at the massive hand and fingers splayed across his knees, is he really Steve Rogers anymore?)

From what Bruce had said, he’d been suffering from low blood sugar from failing to sufficiently feed his monstrous metabolism, and he was down nearly ten pounds (~4.5 kg) from his last medical checkup, his body fighting him the whole way. Steve doesn’t know how to put the overwhelming feeling of guilt whenever he eats into comprehensive words. 

There’s a preliminary mealplan in his lap, the gradual climb up from the tiny amount he had been consuming before. Steve feels sick looking at it. His dinner on the first night could have fed him and his ma for two nights back when he was small.

At the bottom of the page, there are words hastily written in Tony’s messy scrawl.

_This isn’t the Great Depression anymore, old man. You couldn’t eat all the food in the tower if you tried._

Steve clings to the thought as he slips out of the hospital bed, promising himself that he would eat in the morning.

 

After the incident, Steve is more careful about eating.

He learns the signs that his body is about to give out and acts accordingly, making sure to eat before heavy training and missions, in public spaces. (The food tastes like ash and sawdust and guilt and _too much_.)

The servings on the mealplan are meticulously divided into halves before he prepares them, stretching the food to last.

(The serum demands his sacrifice, to keep the braziers in the temple of his enhanced body alight.)

 

The hunger feels like absolution.

It’s a few days before Steve comes to this epiphany.

He’s enhanced, genetically designed to withstand hell, so it wouldn’t _really_ hurt if his coping mechanisms are bad, right?

He’ll serve this penance for as long as it takes for him to stop feeling the guilt that burns him down to the core.

 

He can  _see_ his ribs again, he realizes, not just when he breathes in. He’s still a foot too tall with shoulders that could have crushed his tiny self, but the face in the mirror is slightly more bearable now. His sigh tastes of relief and a vanilla protein shake.

Somehow, he thinks about fitting into Bucky’s arms again when he curls up in his bed that night.

 

Life goes on, and the team falls together like pieces of a puzzle, if the puzzle was made of plastic and left too close to a fire.

Steve learns the hard way not to touch Natasha if she isn’t expecting it, and a vent was ripped out of the ceiling with an irate Clint inside of it. Tony lashes out with words that cut (hurt or be hurt could be his life philosophy, and who could blame him?), defense and offense rolled into one. Bruce has a fear behind his eyes that never seems to go away, and Thor’s cheer sometimes slips to reveal old eyes, dulled by centuries of life and grief and battle.

But— Natasha loves anything with coconut in it, Tony has been sober for 4 years, 3 months, and 29 days, and Clint takes Steve up on a target practice competition as an apology. Bruce prefers spicy food to sweets, Thor invites him to watch nature documentaries together when Steve wanders into the common room late one night.

It’s not all bad.

 

The sound of Tony’s chatter is drowned out by the blood pounding in Steve’s head as they sit down for another team dinner.

(He thinks he can feel eyes on him when he eats, but no one is ever looking at him when he looks up.)

 

The next morning, the Avengers recieve a call. Several HYDRA bases have resurfaced on SHIELD radar in Virginia, razed to the ground with no leads and no witnesses left alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can’t write dialogue help  
> some hand wave-y science here, though i now have intimate knowledge of every symptom of hypoglycemia in my research;;  
> thank you to all my reviewers (and my friends who clicked kudos!) for your enthusiastic support! though I’m Bad At Responding, i really deeply appreciate your comments and i love reading them!! (to the people who loved the previous chapter, this one’s for you! all my inspiration and energy for writing this new chapter was because of your encouragement! thank you thank you!!!) <3  
> i’m trying to not character-bash here! i love tony and bruce, but I hc steve as a more anxious/suspicious type and he’s prone to overanalyzing the behaviors/words of the people around him! they’ll seem nicer from his perspective as they grow closer soon!!


	9. how does it feel (to feel nothing at all)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bucky’s here, never fear! (or maybe do. just a little.) + uh slight gore warning + steve has a panic attack and almost throws up  
> :(
> 
> also i have zero concept of verb tense i’m sorry

_When does war end? When it ends you._

 

A week later, Natasha, Clint, and Steve are called in by Director Fury, a large screen on the far wall of the empty conference room already lit up with the ruins of five newly discovered HYDRA bases.

Steve feels a swell of hot nausea in his gut. _He’s played this game before._

Natasha is standing on the opposite side of the table, arms crossed and face stony. Her eyes glitter like dying stars, frigid gaze washing over the pictures. Clint stands a little ways behind her, looking away. The hand carefully placed in the small of Natasha’s back belies his cold mask of indifference.

Averting his gaze, Steve reaches for the glossy black folder on the table.

The bases had been scattered across the countryside of Virginia, each inconspicuous farmhouse and barn burned to the ground, revealing the twisted concrete and steel underneath. Two of the bases had been active, the men inside killed with deadly precision. One man looks as if his throat had been crushed in a vise grip, head twisted back unnaturally, milky eyes open. What remained of his neck was no wider than the flat side of Steve’s wrist, white splinters of bone visible through mangled flesh. Steve flips the page, a sour taste in his mouth.

 

By the time they arrive on-site, the bodies had been cleared away by SHIELD agents, plastic yellow evidence markers littering the floor. There are dark stains marking the walls and floors, the bitter scent of smoke clinging to the blackened stone. The smell fills Steve's lungs, thick and choking.

Hallway after hallway they walk, each room revealing more death. Natasha’s features harden and sharpen like cut diamond, lips thinning as she stalks forward. She seems to be looking for something.

Corner after corner they turn, and Steve grows dizzy and nauseous. There’s a lump in his throat that he can’t swallow past, his mouth desert dry. In the back of his mind, he scrambles to remember the last time he ate.

_The chin strap’s choking him, the scent of sweat and death and fear heavy in the rank air of the base. Barred windows blur as he sprints past, the elbow of his sleeve rips as it snags on a jagged edge of metal. Corner after corner, he nearly slips in the stagnant water puddled on the uneven floor._

Clint’s saying something, but Steve can only hear the murmur of his voice, absently noting that his vision is blurring between flickering fluorescent lights and a distant green twilight hell.

_There’s a man in the middle of the hallway, and they both freeze. Some sort of understanding passes between them, and then he’s gone. Steve can feel his heart thudding in his throat as he follows a faint voice from around the corner._

Natasha stops at the foot of a set of stairs, hand tightening around her gun as she ascends. Steve numbly follows.

_Bucky’s lying on the table, eyes staring into space. His lips move, and Steve wants to vomit when he recognizes the words he’s mumbling._

“Steve?” Steve reaches the top of the stairs, glazed eyes catching on the chair in the center of the room. It’s a set of bare bones, twisted by the heat of the earby flames and blunt force at some point in time.

_“Steve.” A disbelieving smile, the familiar curl of a lip._

Steve spins to the side and retches, gasping.

It feels like all the air in the room has been infected with the acrid scent, and Steve can taste blood on his tongue, copper coating the inside of his throat. He’s choking on thin air, and maybe he hears explosions in the distance, the creaking of a metal walkway retracting. Natasha— no, Bucky— no, _Natasha’s_ hand is on his back, his shoulders, guiding him to the floor.

_“I thought you were dead.”_

“Steve, are you alright?”

_“I thought you were smaller.”_

Steve’s head swims, and Natasha’s hand feels tiny against the vast expanse between his shoulderblades. The thought is nauseating.

_“Did it hurt?”_

Steve breathes fast and heavy, wishing he could curl into himself until there’s nothing left but a speck of his existence.

_“A little.”_

He can hear Clint’s voice beside him, voice almost too loud but words indistinct.

_“Is it permanent?”_

Steve swallows, feeling the roiling mass of terror recede to coil in the base of his chest, the nausea to a dull murmur in his brain. His eyeballs don’t feel like they’re about to burst in his head anymore. He pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the wary looks from the two spies.

_“So far.”_

 

They leave the skeletons of the warehouse empty-handed. To their credit, Natasha and Clint don’t change their behavior towards Steve, opting to discuss their meager findings back in the jet. Steve knows they’ll ask him soon, why he reacted the way he did. (Steve’s not really quite sure why he did either.)

There’s still cold sweat in the creases of his leather gloves. His skin is crawling and buzzing, and his throat isn’t swallowing right. He catches the turn of Clint’s head, and his lips are already opening to answer when a calloused hand falls on his knee.

“You alright, Cap?”

Steve’s eyes snap up. He nods jerkily, mouth closing.

Clint nods, turning back to the maps spread on the breakfast tray. His hand leaves a warm print through Steve’s nondescript army-issue uniform, and Steve isn’t sure he breathed for another minute.

Neither of them say a thing about the chair on the trip back, and Steve finds enough remaining energy within himself to feel grateful.


	10. i drink but i choke (none of it's feeling right)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After running into dead-ends at the other bases, Steve, Clint, and Natasha return to the Tower empty-handed. Steve deals with his PTSD the only way he knows how, leftover from his army days, when they called it battle fatigue and called people who had it weak.
> 
> tw: graphic descriptions of self-injurious behaviors, obsessive-compulsive behaviors

_Bucky’s face hovers close in his swimming vision, silhouetted against the peeling ceiling of their apartment. Steve supposes that he’s sick again, his memories coming up blank. His arms feel too heavy to lift, but his fingers itch to smooth the crease between his eyebrows._

_“‘f ya keep frownin’ like that you’re gonna get wrinkles, jerk.” He mumbles, eyes threatening to drift shut. Better to sleep this off, and face Bucky’s wrath later when he felt up to it._

_Bucky’s saying something, his expression urgent, lips moving, but Steve feels like he’s underwater. The fever makes his skin prickle painfully as he shifts in bed, trying to hear._

_(Something’s wrong.)_

_“Buck, I can’t… hear you.”_

_Bucky doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he looks panicked, yelling silently. Steve must’ve blacked out or fallen asleep or something, his gut turning like he was falling from a great height. There are rough hands on his shoulders, shaking him, crushing him back into the bed._

_Bucky’s gone now, the yellowed ceiling replaced with a glass panel, spiderwebbed with cracks. He’s in a chair now, surrounded by a twisted metal corpse, bubbles shimmering as they floated up._

_There’s. There’s water on the other side._

_There’s water inside._

_His chest still hurts, lungs spasming._

_Where’s Bucky?_

_Bucky?_

 

Steve wakes with his heart pounding in his throat. The sheets under him are cold against his skin, damp with sweat. The room is dark, the walls suddenly a lot closer than they seemed in daylight.

For a moment, he can’t tell where he is. The blank walls tell him nothing until he recognizes his own floor in the Tower. 

It takes an astonishing amount of energy and willpower to bring his hand up to his hair, pushing the short spikes back, stiff with cold sweat. His arms feel like deadweights.

Steve exhales into the empty space, allowing himself a moment to tremble and fist his numb hands in the sheets before swinging his feet out of bed. 

His body is heavy, like his skin had been filled with sand while he was asleep. He drags himself to the kitchen counter and pours a glass of water. The low lights come on automatically, warm amber pooling in a soft circle as he sips slowly.

For some reason, he can’t seem to calm down.

 

Abandoning the glass, Steve steps out of the light. 

There are three entryways into his floor, he knows. The fire escape window is locked. The stairway door is locked. The elevator is Avengers-only access, which would have to do.

His nerves wear raw as he paces, growing more unbearable every time he checks the three entrances. A hysterical scream is clawing up his raw throat, breaths coming quicker.

A glance at the clock in the kitchen tells him that it’s 4:03 am. Early, but in this place, anyone could be awake at any point in the day.

Steve doesn’t think he’s ready to face Natasha or Clint right now. His breakdown the other day is still grating at the back of his mind, demanding his attention. He shoves it back farther.

Unbidden, the memory surfaces. He can see himself folding, caught in the memory and Natasha spinning around to see him on the floor. What must his team think of him?

Steve needs no reminder of his own irrelevance. On a team of modern superheroes, he is a relic, a souvenir of a generation long gone, outdated. He leads a team whose competence far exceeds him; they’ll never respect him if he can’t prove himself strong enough to bear the burden of his position.

 

Steve remembers what they called it during the war— shellshock, battle fatigue. The name was taboo, whispers rippling around the scores of dead-eyed men among them. Steve had seen men be slapped and beaten by their officers, humiliated in front of their comrades when they appealed for discharge. He had seen boys of nineteen drink enough to poison them, seen men who fought in the first world war crying in their sleep. He himself had been ordered to keep sending them into battle, by higher-ups and letters from home. 

_"If he isn’t dying, then he can still fight. What are you, a coward?"_

__"Can't you see?"_ _Steve wants to scream. __"They're already dying!"__

But there was little he could do to sway the brass or the men themselves, who received letters from home condemning them if they come home alive without a medal or award.

By the end of six months, Steve could look at his company and single out those who would not live to see the end of the month. He tried his best to appeal on behalf of his men, throwing his title behind every name he could to get them home.

(It never really felt like enough.)

 

There is no war now. Most of America has not known war for a generation and a half, and it’s high time he caught up.

(—Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back in the freezing Swiss Alps, and Bucky’s slipping past his fingertips, and he can’t _breathe_ —)

 

His cheeks burn and he abruptly stands again, itching to move, to run, to _hurt_.

Draining the glass, he pushes back from the counter, dropping to the floor. Despite the seventy-year gap, he remembers Lieutenant Miller's voice loud and clear, remembers his frigid grey gaze as he roared at the exhausted men.

(The man has seen too much war, Steve thinks.

The only constant in war is that it will change you; some walk away wounded, cradling the broken pieces of themselves in their hands and unable to put them back together. Some walk away hardened, gazes sharpening to deadly points and fists ready to hurt— most of them never really come home, forever trapped in the violence of the battlefield, like an addiction. And some don’t walk away at all.)

 _75 push-ups!_ _100 lunges! Now backwards! 80 squats! Again, faster!_

Steve accounts for his enhanced strength, tripling each command in his mind. His arms shake underneath him, the sweat soaking into the back of his shirt drying in the cool breeze of the air conditioner. 

He loses himself in the mind-numbing exercises, soon unable to focus on anything except completing the next set, the burn of overworked muscles. Gradually, the shriek dies in his throat and the throb under his skin fades into the pulse of his heart.

Steve finishes as the first rays of dawn reach across the white tile floors, more tired than calm.

 

He swears he meant to go on a run. He might have. (He's not sure.)

Steve comes back to himself at some point later in the morning. He's sitting at the kitchen counter again, eyes fixed on the silver tracings in the marble counter. He's still in the T-shirt and shorts he fell asleep in, and the cotton is dry again, which tells him he's been sitting there for a while. 

His body feels like it weighs a million pounds, like his legs won't be able to support him if he tries to stand. He doesn't, fighting a rush of adrenaline through his veins as he becomes aware of his surroundings again. He breathes deep like he's taking his first breath in a thousand years, imagining his neck creaking as he turns his head slowly.

There's no ache in his muscles, no evidence that his compulsive regimen had even happened.

The sight of his unblemished skin is suddenly unbearable, tears of frustration building behind his eyes. His breath feels like it’s thickening inside of his lungs, turning into concrete. 

Lurching from his chair, Steve stumbles into his bedroom, snatching up the old-fashioned Swiss Army knife and drawing a deep slice across the pale inside of his forearm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for disappearing for so long! i’ve been doing Not So Good recently, but i'm back now and working on feeling a lil better :')
> 
> also: my verb tenses are everywhere because i can’t seem to make up my mind on whether i want to write in present or past tense wah  
> big big big thank you again to all my lovely reviewers! your kindness means the world to me!!! <3


	11. the people danced to the sound of your heart (the world sang along to it falling apart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for graphic self injury and a dissociative episode
> 
> note: i’ve edited chapter 8 to clarify the first motive of steve’s disordered eating habits— he uses it to cope with guilt from his past and tries to maintain continuity between the two centuries he’s lived through + his body is hard to recognize as his own because of how fast he gained all the muscle and height. someone please give my boy a hug :’>
> 
> *rip to everyone who had subscriptions on for me while i was going through and fixing all my grammar inconsistencies aaaaaaa

Blood wells up from the wound, garishly red. His mind doesn’t even register the sting at first— his scalp has gone numb. The air is frozen in his lungs, freezing him from the inside out, a wash of cold poured down his spine. Steve stares down at his arm, at the sickening scarlet smile carved into his skin, lightheaded.

He feels like his consciousness has been forcibly yanked from his body; the knife is still poised over his arm, its smooth edge glistening. In slow motion, a thick red stream spills over the edge and down his arm.

Moving automatically, Steve drops the knife on the nightstand and cups his freed hand underneath. The red doesn’t look any less bright smeared across the white of his numb fingers, pooling between his fingers.

 

And then he slams back into himself. There’s a lot of blood now, and his heart is suddenly slamming against his ribs.

His feet carry him to the bathroom, and red hits the pristine white sink. Steve feels sick and dizzy, off-balance.

His thoughts swirl wildly in his head as he shoves his hand under the running water, incoherent and panicked.

The choked catch of breath in his frozen lungs can’t be passed off for an asthma attack now, but there’s nobody around to make excuses to anyway.

The lights in the bathroom feel too bright, stabbing into his oversensitive eyes. The slick red coating his skin swirls down the drain.

Before his eyes, the edges of the wound begin to close, the new skin shiny and pink.

 

There’s blood spatter dried on the surface of his nightstand under the knife. Steve mechanically wets a paper towel and scrubbed it off, ignoring the tremor in his hands.

He’s not crazy. He’s not.

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve flinches, whipping around guiltily. JARVIS’ voice didn’t seem to come from any particular direction, and he would feel silly for staring at the ceiling for a response if he wasn’t scrambling for an excuse for his actions.

“My recent observations and access to your file have aligned your behavioral patterns to patterns consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder and—“

“I’m fine.” Steve blurts, heart in his throat.  _ What if his team finds out? _

Steve’s heard of mental hospitals back in his time. Penitentiaries, isolated buildings with dark windows and covered bodies carted out the back in the dead of the night. People who went in often came out even worse than before, wild-eyed and nearly feral (if they came out at all. Most didn’t.).

“I would highly rec—“

“It’s fine. Really.” He’s still shaking. A silence falls over the room, and Steve’s imagination runs wild. 

_ He’s telling Tony, and Tony’s going to tell Fury I’m not fit to serve. He’s going to tell the team that I need to be locked up.  _

Steve lets out a low moan, collapsing onto the covers. No matter where he goes, he’ll probably be found, in the age of cameras and instant communication— even  _ without _ the two superspies on his trail.

Steve wants to go home.

 

He spends the next hour shut in his room, bargaining with a god he’s not sure he believes in anymore.

_ It was a momentary lapse in judgement, it won’t happen again. Honest.  _

Steve can feel the weight of his fate pressing in on his head as he revises his excuses for the team. 

Surely the U.S. Army or SHIELD would be reluctant to give him up. They  _ could _ overlook one singular incident, right?

He’s on his feet again, shaking, pacing from wall to wall. He can picture the disappointment and contempt in the Avengers’ faces with perfect clarity.

_ You shouldn’t even be here. _

Captain America is expendable. (Steve is expendable.)

 

He can’t feel the skin on his face or hands as he digs his nails into the edge of his scalp above his forehead. Maybe he’ll be able to peel off the flesh prison that he wears, peel his new body off from his hairline until only tiny Steve Rogers is left. It’s a tempting thought.

His fingers come away smeared red, even though it didn’t feel like he’d used much force. (He can’t feel anything.)

The blood looks fake. It’s too bright.

His gaze slides past his bloody fingers on a hand too big for him to the dresser behind it. The furniture looks fake too.

Everything around him looks sort of like the digital prototypes of Tony’s designs before he assigns material for texture. Too smooth and oddly shaded, slightly off.

Nothing is real.

Steve feels like he’s being sucked into his vast body, into this fleshy mold with a hollow too big for him to fit into. He’s vaguely aware of his vision tunneling and his chest tightening, the rims of his outer ears burning as blood pounds through his skull.

The gory image of his head exploding and coating the fake unsurfaced walls in a wash of red and white and grey has a vicious appeal. He’d scream if he had the breath to, scream until his lungs collapse and this magnificent borrowed body breaks.

 

Steve can't breathe, and the feeling is familiar. Except there’s no hand under his chin to gently tip back his head, and no warm chest pressed against his back as he sits heavily on the bed.

His massive, maximum efficiency lungs spasm in his chest as he wheezes, forcing air past his constricting throat.

Right.

His mom’s dead, Bucky’s dead.

He slides to the floor, curling up against the blankets draped over the edge and pulling his knees to his chest.

_ Shh, _ a phantom hand caresses his forehead, pushing back his sweaty forelock.  _ Breathe with me, darling. _

  
  


Somehow, he pulls himself together long enough to finish cleaning up all evidence of his slip. The shower he takes fills the room with steam, and he watches his skin redden under the scalding water without feeling it.

Time passes, and he musters up the energy to dress himself and collapse into bed. 

The sun is setting.

 

He wakes up again sometime later, by a loose definition of ‘waking up.’

The sun is still setting.

He lets his heavy eyelids fall shut again.

 

_ Bucky’s lying next to him, brown hair tickling the edge of Steve’s cheek. There’s a spring digging into his ribs, and he shifts. _

_ The ceiling above his face is familiar, dust motes drifting idly through the air wafting in through the crack in their one window. The air is warm and muggy, carrying the faint scent of city smog and old wallpaper. He knows where he is. _

_ The heavy weight across his stomach is Bucky’s arm, pulling him in like an octopus despite the humid summer heat. His bad ear can barely pick up the sound of deep, even breaths breezing over the base of his neck. Farther down, there are knees curved against the backs of his legs, his bony ankles tangled with another pair. _

_ Steve thinks that he’d stay here forever if he could, curled small in Bucky’s arms. _

  
  


The next time Steve wakes up, it’s nighttime. Everything still feels surreal, but in a way that is somewhat acceptable in the dead of the night.

There’s a strand of cobweb in one corner of the ceiling, trembling as the air cycles on. He thinks that he could have just laid there until he fell asleep again, trapped inside the lead prison of his body, but the cold air on his face pulls him forward into reality.

Slowly (he feels like his bones are made of glass— if his feet hit the floor too hard, he might shatter into a million pieces), he sits up in bed and swings his legs over the edge. It takes a tremendous amount of effort for an action so small, but he’s finally standing again.

His vision blacks out, pressure behind his eyeballs as the blood rushed from his head, and he blindly grabs for the wall to support himself before he falls. (Awfully long way to the ground, ain’t it?)

When his vision returns, Steve asks JARVIS for the date. His voice is hoarse from disuse, and it takes him a try before noise passes his dry, cracked lips.

 

He’s been in bed for 29 hours, apparently.

 

Even under the softened lights in the bathroom, Steve looks terrible. His reflection looks worn, red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes above dark shadows, his skin a sickly, blotchy white. His hair is uncombed, flopping limply over his forehead.

(The skin of his arm is smooth again, and his brain scrambles to reconcile a full day of sleep with the absence of the wound. Nothing he does to this miracle body has permanence.)

A splash of hot water on his face restores some of the color, and a finger-comb would have to do. His arms creak as he forces them into action.

 

The mealplan Bruce gave him is lying on the living room table, forgotten since he’d returned from medical. Steve can't remember the last time he ate, but he isn’t hungry enough to care at the moment.

It can wait.

He knows he’s avoiding it, the refrigerator on his floor stocked with waterbottles, protein shakes, and an unopened bottle of ketchup. The thought of preparing anything more makes his body feel heavy and slow, tired.

It’s ridiculous, how he can lift a car without breaking a sweat but balk at the idea of preparing his own meals. Maybe living in this new body has made him lazy, accustomed to privilege. (Steve knows this isn’t true. He knows that the exhaustion that follows him isn’t something sleep or hard work can fix, but laziness is easier than facing whatever is actually wrong with him. At least with that, there’s a chance of getting better.)

The shake tastes powdery and thick, tasteless sludge sticking to the inside of his throat. He’s had worse than this before, but it doesn’t stop him from almost gagging on the way it coats the backs of his teeth.

JARVIS’ voice sounds, soft in the silence of his apartment. “Agent Romanoff has requested to visit you in a half hour; shall I let her in?”

It’s the middle of the night, but Steve’s learned to not bet anything against Natasha.

Steve surveys his apartment carefully. The knife is clean and back in the drawer, the blood cleaned and disposed of. Nothing is out of place.

“Sure.”

The plastic bottle, half-full, is abandoned on the counter.

 

The elevator dings quietly as it opens. Steve can barely hear Natasha’s footfalls on the linoleum, padding into the living room. 

He’s not sure why she’s asking to come at this hour; none of the Avengers have visited him, and he’s had little interaction with her outside of missions and formalities when their paths cross in the Tower.

(Steve can remember echoes of Clint’s warm hand on his knee and the feel of Natasha’s small hands on his back, palm warm between his shoulderblades as he tried to remember how to breathe.)

He forces himself to not flinch when she appears at the entryway, somehow closer and more real than he had anticipated. His smile feels brittle and artificial, but it’s the best he can do. 

“Agent Romanoff, what can I do for you?” (He’s had a lot of experience mustering bravado he doesn’t have after embarrassing defeats before the serum— this should be no different.)

“Can we watch a movie?” 

Steve blinks, smile freezing. 

“Clint doesn’t want to share and I can’t be bothered to drag Tony out of his lab to watch with me.” She scoops the remote off the tv stand where it had been gathering dust since Steve moved in, settling down on the couch behind him.

Nonplussed, Steve sinks down next to her, keeping a respectful distance. How do people in the twenty-first century do things?

“I hope you haven’t watched the alternate original series of Star Trek.” The screen comes to life as she curls up. JARVIS dims the lights down.

In the blue glow, Natasha looks softer, blurred at the edges. Steve might still be reeling at the odd visit, but warmth swells in his chest.

 

It’s not until the second movie that either of them speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m so sorry for the wait— here’s a doubly long chapter to (try to) make up for my long absence! D:
> 
> a lot of what steve feels in this chapter is dumped from my head— everything is hard and i’m a mess, but i like to think that writing out the comfort i wish i had makes me feel better :’>

**Author's Note:**

> please feel free to leave a comment below! 
> 
> i always love reading what people think and feel after reading! come scream at me over steeb and bucko, drop some prompts you’d like to see from me; constructive criticism is welcome too :)


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